It’s the unvarnished portrait of war pushed in front of our eyes thanks to the publication by the New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and the WikiLeaks website of approximately 92,000 pages of sensitive U.S. intelligence documents. The dramatically named “War Logs” no doubt posing questions about the direction and strategy of the Afghan war, our tense yet active relationship with Pakistan, our overall security, and the U.S. Military‘s attitude toward collateral damage and perhaps even war crimes. Similarly this release will force us to probe the competency and truthfulness of both the Obama and Bush administration, and the actions and motives of the documents publishers who seemingly abandoned the questions of should for the embrace of can.

But through all that confusion, all those questions outwardly posed shouldn’t we ask ourselves why this feels like such a revelation? Shouldn’t we have been suspicious of Pakistan, a potential rogue nuclear power, an aggressor that makes no secret of their alliances? Shouldn’t we be weary of Government proclamations of progress and success in an almost decade long war that has delivered on none of its promises? How can we not know, down deep in our guts that war is blood, messy and raw with no break, no pause? Not a video game, not a slick movie. War is simply a necessary yet faulty construct guaranteed to spring blood from innocent wells. That reality should spare no ones false utopia, piercing the historical and heroic descriptions of war that leave out the mountains of subtext, the gray that gives us a more full idea of wars true cost.

These whispers have been heard before, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark even went so far as to accuse the first Bush administration of war crimes, presenting a report to the International War Crimes Tribunal. Included below is an excerpt from that report and a gruesome image that accompanied it.

“The “Highway of Death,” a name the press has given to the    road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being [pictured above] suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat.” There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death.” The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force. -Ramsey Clark

Now while some have for nearly two decades sought to invalidate Mr. Clark’s report painting it as the rants and raves of an extreme leftist anti-war activist and his gang of like-minded pacifists the fact remains that the “Highway of Death” did not exist solely in the pages of Ramsey Clark’s report. This clip by Canada’s CBC network clearly demonstrates that, displaying the aftermath of the attack with torched civilian vehicles surrounding the myriad of children’s toys spilled onto the street among the military transports for looters to pick through. And of course the “Highway of Death” incident is not the sole indiscretion by the U.S Military in the Gulf conflict or any other conflict past or present.

Our military failings are numerous, documented, known by some but ignored by many. The reaction to this leak proves as much. That we persist, that we continue to wage war despite such sins is a mark against a world that has shown no capacity for peace, no head for tolerance, freedom, or a steady calm sea of existence. Our failings do not render war obsolete, and they should not make us less willing to fight, to sacrifice in the name of justice, in the name of peace. No, those failings simply demand that we continue to try to step gently into the theater of war, mindful of the innocence that dances all around a combat zone. They demand an unyielding effort to protect and respect that innocence for the sake of morality, and for the sake of the ideals we are fighting for, they ask for repentance when we fail, and they beg that we prosper and that we are somehow better than we have been. Maybe this leak helps advance that directive, maybe the rewards out measure the risks. More questions whose answers will unravel over time. But on this day, hours after the release of the “War Logs” one thing is a crystalline truth, a war that always felt real to so many just became shockingly true to all of us.

Jason Tabrys is the Editor and Chief Contributor for Painespeak.com. A national columnist for Examiner.com Jason can be followed on twitter by clicking @JasonTabrys

In this, the supposed era of post-partisanship we see an everyday display of the growing chasm that exists between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP sprinting toward the outer fringes of the right while Democrats move desperately toward the middle, fruitlessly pursuing displaced moderates. Every speech a broken promise in waiting, crafted to value party over people. Our American way of politics hopelessly broken.

Or is it? After-all our politics mirror our perception of humanity. Republicans and Democrats alike drawing from their own beliefs to form an agenda that serves (among other things) their core values. The Republican Party, historically an advocate of the wealthy have nevertheless been able to create and maintain a broad support base among ordinary Americans. They do this by effectively co-opting the social and religious values of traditional fundamentalist Christianity. A linch pin of capitalism buoyed by Puritan and Calvinist theories and a view that individuals alone can and should determine their own destiny through hard work and perseverance. A belief that abhors Government safety nets advocating consequence and for the truly afflicted Christian charity.

The history of America, as interpreted by Republicans portrays an idyllic past where this arrangement works seamlessly, a simpler and more virtuous time, and a complete fallacy. And yet this substantial and sustained lie remains, deeply imbued within the mental fabric of so many Americans, defining their psyche and ultimately determining their politics.

This remains true even as time has washed away some of Christianities cover, undermining its long held philosophies and changing, for the objective mind what it means to be human. We now know that humans are social animals and of the earth like all other animals. We humans have an incontrovertible relation with photosynthetic life which feeds us- and with the heterotrophic bacteria that remove and convert our waste. The spirit of man is not some ephemeral breath which flees the body ascending to heaven or falling to hell upon his last breath. Man’s soul is his body and his social relations. The beginning of politics is biology. If that part of it is not right we cannot legitimately wonder why the rest goes wrong.

In contrast to the Right the politics of the radical Left are based on this scientific view of humanity. A world where human beings belong to a living system in which all beings are connected with all others- and all alive today are connected with all that have lived in the past. We are neither the pinnacle nor the culmination of evolution- we are the humans, from the humus, soil- earth. The far left have the correct definition of man, the politics should follow naturally.

Daniel Collins is a contributor to Painespeak.com, he can be followed on twitter by clicking @DanielKalinz

British Petroleum can be accurately called many things: greedy, reckless, an environmental tyrant, aloof, and astonishingly bad at damn near everything they attempt. They are a success despite their numerous failings, a product of an industry propped up by the addictive properties of its merchandise. But “flattery” aside BP is also the employer of almost 100,000 people worldwide, and its likely most of them are not evil.

And that’s the point, BP is a company comprised of people, some with fancy suits and hidden agendas in desperate need of an indictment, and some with a mop and a broom or a cubicle and a ceaselessly ringing phone. These people have families, attend soccer games, and do all the things you or I enjoy in our thoroughly non-villainous lives. It’s these people though that are suffering a different kind of torture then the thousands and thousands of displaced fisherman and Gulf residents, the keepers of the Gulf Coasts disappearing majesty. A different torture, but torture all the same.

So why are we seeking to attack them? Our concern over collateral damage practically non-existent. It’s they who will be most affected if BP folds. They and us. You see BP has for better or worse been accountable. They have thus far spent the money, willfully supplying a $20 billion dollar escrow for the recovery effort, and they are handling the repair effort and the cleanup effort concurrently. Are they doing it well? No, but that’s another matter altogether. The point is they are signing the checks and if they suddenly disappeared then who would that responsibility fall too? The answer: you, me, and those fisherman, with our tax dollars that are already spread too thin.

Calls to ban BP from off shore drilling (but not Transocean?), from oil exploration of any sort within the US and its territories, and the cancellation of productive Government contracts are little more than efforts to aggressively punish a company that has angered and wounded us. No due process, no investigation, but rather a public flogging with no regard for what happens to BP, a company that could find itself morally and fiscally viable once more with the aid of a few well placed executive indictments. No concern for those people working the refineries, those people on the rigs, or working one of tens of thousands of jobs within BP that had nothing to do with this spill or the poor effort to contain it. No worry over the thousands of independent small business owners and near minimum wage workers that operate or work for BP brand gas stations across the US that are being hit hard by boycotts.

Still, some would argue that BP has operated consistently with little to no consideration for the potential or true damage done to the Gulf Coast, its innocent residents, and the other areas throughout the world where BP maintains a drilling presence. They would argue that the destruction of this company is what karma demands, it is just, and it is righteous, and they would not be wrong in light of the decimation, environmental and economic to the Gulf Coast. But in following that line of logic we forsake our system of laws, the means for which we attain actual justice. Something a mob mentality cannot achieve.

Indeed we can rip this company to shreds, we have that ability without question. We can disregard the damage that would bring in the name of blood-lust and smile broadly at the decimation. But applying our passion to those pursuits does nothing to improve the situation in the Gulf. It does nothing to ensure that something like this never happens again.

And so rather then embrace our base instincts, giving in to our anger we can In this fleeting moment of increased awareness and zeal, work to reform high consumption behavior, and push for true investment in alternative fuels and environmental protections. In this moment we can demand that our Government craft a new energy plan without the corrupting influence of industry. An energy plan that strictly and without fail regulates the energy industry while simultaneously investigating BP and lowering the full force of the law onto the heads of those guilty of corruption and negligence. It’s up to us to determine the course of our fire, up to us to move toward the productive or blindly tear apart a company, our misspent rage, and hollow activism leaving us with a bigger mess and a Gulf Coast still in tatters.

This will sound like a pebble in an ocean, a whisper in a rainstorm but I must ask you what is your guiding star? Are you pulled by politic or principle? It is a struggle, pushing you toward both ends. I know your need, your hunger for something more no matter your method, no matter your tone. Politics needs passion, it feeds upon it, draining us of our hopes, our dreams, leaving only a shell of apathy and dissent. And yet we open our veins to its jagged teeth, and yet we bare our souls to a maddening process certain to disappoint and mangle.

We are the romantics that dream of a better world, those that fight for the rights of ourselves and those around us. We are Democrats, we are Republicans, we are Independents, and we are Other. Soldiers all fighting in the same war on the same side. Soldiers following our lesser natures while engaging in bickering and posturing, impuning our brothers and sisters over petty disagreements for hollow pride in the name of “politics“, not fighting for our country but toward its unraveling .

We ought to be better, we ought to stand together and not splinter upon the burden of tiny fractures. Our cause seems unified but not our spirit, and I am bewildered by this, and I am guilty of this as much as you, if not more-my sins confessed and repented for, my behavior no doubt poised to repeat its devilish ways because we cannot be perfect but we can, with relative ease be better by adhering to our principles.

We can seek out intelligence and bravery in our elected leaders, choosing from within us the best of us to rediscover the lost art of leadership. We can respect and acknowledge the sheer patriotism that is ingrained in any person that throws body to the flames and spikes of this process, this pastime, and we can work to disavow any knowledge of those that would split our ranks for the sake of their own selfish feasts, damning not just our better angels to places of darkness but our nation to the ranks of the listless and bare. Salvation can come to those who battle not with fists and fiery rhetoric but who exercise restraint, compassion, and allow themselves the splendor of an open mind.

He’s one. One story, one splintered bit of something that used to feel whole, solid, and limitless. Futures fade faster these days and a regular guy with a strong work ethic, the kind of guy that used to find success, find a place in this country now stands on the slippery edge.

Its all necessity now, no corners left to cut. Daily calculations minus every dime and dollar from a dwindling pot down to zero while some things fall by the way side. And like that a credit report can be destroyed, and like that a house can hang by a thread, this is how someone becomes homeless, this is how good people stop paying their bills.

It’s been almost three years for him, three years of interviews and rejections, of struggle, depression, tears, and at times laughter because sometimes there’s nothing else. He’s been made harder by this ordeal, an easy smile not as quick to appear, fading fast, drowned by the anxiety that comes rushing in.

In September of 2007 it was the layoff, not unexpected after months of cutbacks. “Three months tops” he told his wife, reassuring her that he would have a job in three months. But nobody expected a downturn to turn into a crater, crushing millions of jobs, millions of lives just like his.

He was sick a few months later, his arms and legs heavy, heavier everyday while his lips lazily moved to form words that had previously seemed effortless. A little while later he was on temporary disability, this treatment and that chipping away at the disease, bringing him back but not all the way back, not sick enough to be considered disabled but not well enough to work without limitations as he always had before.

Still resumes went out, via email, in person, through the mail. More then a thousand, but less then ten thousand he estimates, with call backs and interviews few and far between. There were glimmers though, the job he had interviewed for prior to getting sick calling to offer him a job that he was more then capable of doing with only minor accomodations, their enthusiasm for him slowly sliding away as he asked for a downstairs desk due to his inability to climb stairs, “we never did hear back from them“ his wife says.

It was in the Spring of last year when the nightmare descended further down into the black and thorny, something they had feared ever since he had lost his job, his wife had lost hers. “It was like our emergency shoot ripped while we were falling” she says.

They sit now in their living room, those objects people often find solace in sold off to pay their bills and keep their house. His benefits have run out now, hers not enough for two people to get by one. Their COBRA subsidy ends soon with his medical bills still faithfully coming in, “almost daily, something, a phone call and then a threatening letter. We tell them we have nothing they tell us to borrow from our friends and family.” she recounts, a pile of bills maybe three inches thick in her hands.

Family has helped, a little here a little there but their not from the kind of folks that have much extra. They’ll get private insurance when their COBRA runs out, a little more money and a lot less coverage. They have no answer, no plan for when their modest savings account runs out, no idea what they can do that they haven’t done already in pursuit of work. “We have optimism” she says, “but not much.”

They are nameless and faceless in this piece because they don’t wish to advertise, because they feel it will pose a disadvantage to them in their pursuit of work if people know about their full struggle. They don’t want pity and they don’t want charity, they just want to keep floating, keep surviving.

They aren’t unique, no different then so many others. All lost in the anonymity of large numbers. Abandoned by the press and the politicians with their hollow and offensive pledges of allegiance and concern. But in that living room they are real, lives built up over time now torn, piece by piece by circumstances beyond their control. Its that kind of tragedy repeated over and over in this country that should shame us for allowing an absence of dialogue, resource, and intervention at a time when “optimism” dies, and lives like theirs fade away to smoke.